One in Three British Jews Consider Leaving UK, Majority Thinks Labour Party Harbours Anti-Semites

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/GettyVICTORIA FRIEDMAN20 Aug 2017

One in three British Jews have become so fearful of anti-Semitic attacks they have considered moving abroad, and four in five believe that the Labour Party harbours anti-Semites in its ranks.

The Antisemitism Barometer, conducted by the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) in partnership with YouGov, found that those considering leaving the UK due to anti-Semitism rose from 28 per cent in 2015 to 31 per cent two years later.

This is despite a fall in anti-Semitic attitudes amongst the British public, according to the study.

The survey also revealed that one in six British Jews (17 per cent) feel unwelcome in the UK and 37 per cent have concealed their Judaism in public.

More than half (53 per cent) feel the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is not doing enough to fight anti-Semitism, and only 39 per cent of British Jews felt confident that anti-Semitic hate crime would be prosecuted.

More than four in five (83 per cent) of British Jews believe that the Labour Party is too tolerant of anti-Semitism amongst their MPs, members, and supporters.

British Jews have been abandoning the Labour Party since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader with the party fighting continued accusations of anti-Semitism.

MP Naz Shah was suspended from the party in 2016 for calling for the “transportation” of Israelis out of the Middle East on social media. In 2017, former London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from the party for claiming there was a “real collaboration” between Zionists and the Nazis before World War Two.

An investigation by the Labour Party, headed by Shami Chakrabarti, found no indication of institutional anti-Semitism within Labour which led to Jewish community leaders calling the findings a “whitewash” and a “fraud”. Ms. Chakrabarti was nominated for a peerage by Corbyn just a few weeks afterwards.

CAA chairman Gideon Falter said of the findings: “We’ve got a very serious situation where on the one hand, British society is very effectively starting to shun anti-Semitism, but the institutions we rely on to protect our communities are not doing enough.

“We’ve been talking about it for years and years. When are they going to wake up?”

With anti-Semitism on the rise from Muslim migrant communities in Europe, notably in Germany which took in over a million migrants from the Middle East and Africa during the migrant crisis, and terror attacks which specifically target Jewish communities, the continent has also seen large numbers of European Jewry considering leaving or making Aliyah (returning to Israel).

Following the Islamist terror attacks in Spain, Barcelona’s chief rabbi has told the nation’s Jews to head for Israel. Rabbi Meir Bar-Hen said: “This place is lost. Don’t repeat the mistake of Algerian Jews, of Venezuelan Jews. Better (get out) early than late. Europe is lost.”